Oklahoma voters go to polls Tuesday

The Oklahoma State Election Board is officially rolling out new voting machines that will collect more data and allow the state election website to report county election data.

Tuesday is the annual schools election but some municipal seats and tax questions are on the ballots, as well as primaries for seats in both the state House and Senate.

Paul Ziriax, secretary of the State Election Board, said the experience for voters should remain the same. The state is still using paper ballots and voters will still scan the ballots themselves into voting machines.

Other improvements include better accessibility for blind, disabled and illiterate voters, who will be able to listen to the ballot over a set of headphones and use braille-marked buttons to make their selections. In the past a poll volunteer has had to read and mark the ballot.

A number of school board seats were filled in December because only one candidate filed for the seat. But while there were a number of uncontested races, some school board races drew more than two candidates.